US border agents cleared in 64 shootings: Report
US Border Patrol agents involved in 64 shooting incidents with 19 of them fatal between January 2010 and October 2012 have been cleared by internal investigators, a report says.
Three more cases are still pending in relation to the incidents. However, all the agents involved remain on active duty, conducting armed patrols along the border, the Los Angeles Times reported on Monday.
In July 2014, the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the Border Patrol's parent agency, launched an internal affairs review following a study of the 67 cases by a police watchdog group that criticized the agency's “lack of diligence” in investigating fatal shootings.
The 2014 study by the Police Executive Research Forum found a “pattern of agents firing in frustration at people throwing rocks from across the border, as well as agents deliberately stepping in front of cars apparently to justify shooting at the drivers,” the report added.
In one incident in 2010, a US Border Patrol agent fatally shot an unarmed 15-year-old Mexican boy in the face after a rock-throwing incident on a border bridge to El Paso.
In another instance in 2011, a Border Patrol agent shot dead a 17-year-old Mexican for throwing rocks from the Mexican side of the border fence near Nogales, Ariz.
Also in the same year, an agent killed a 19-year-old US citizen as he was climbing over a border fence into Mexico near Douglas, Ariz.
Internal affairs have cleared these three agents as well as other agents involved in other incidents, according to Anthony Triplett, who helped direct the investigation at CBP.
Only two agents received disciplinary action, but it was just limited to oral reprimands.
Human rights and immigration activists have lambasted the results of the inquiry and decisions by internal investigators not to charge the agents with crime.
“Turning the page doesn't mean burying the past,” Chris Rickerd from the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington told the LA Times. “There is no assurance to border residents that agents who have used excessive, improper lethal force aren't on the job in their communities.”
Juanita Molina of the Border Action Network, a human rights organization based in Tucson, Arizona, said that the situation is deeply disappointing, adding “When you have someone throwing rocks and someone responding with lethal force, it is just not proportional.”
AT/AGB
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